(edited 14 Oct 07 – see “tool” I discovered)
Let’s put it this way – I have been traveling my bit over the world and peeking into local entertainment to continue my human studies. Obviously in Bangkok I obtained my PHD. No comments, right!? But now I feel I have to update my courses.
Since 1980 I have seen here an incredible evolution in the attitude of Chinese regarding “social interacting” and married life. Living next door the biggest club in town, Destination, “to spend your queerer kuai” (sic – China Daily) and “where the crowd is almost exclusively y-chromosome-possessing” (That’s Beijing). OK, if you guys did not get it yet, it’s a big gay club, packed so much on weekends that it spills over to Gongti Xilu. Once going there with my better half, the lady selling the tickets asked her if she realized it was a gay bar. Of course we know, silly you, the maid of our best friend moonlights there in the vestiaire. We landed there on their anniversary party and we promptly got two mugs with their logo. Better not use those in business meetings, might give some hints where to find me in late nights.
So, Beijing as I knew once, changed. But poor Gilbert still had no clue. I do like a good sauna house and massage. We have our own massage ladies across the street (Liuzheng Massage Clinic), excellent professionals and they come to our home to repair my body from the training schedule – preparing for the next Beijing marathon. I find myself in my bedroom alone with not less than 5 ladies. If your imagination goes astray, stop there. Me plus wife plus daughter and three massage ladies, OK!
My preferred sauna house is 5 minutes walk – Pacific Ocean Club. I learned about this entertainment novelty less than two years ago. I just love it. A huge building, huge sauna area (one for ladies and one for men). Families go there sometimes with the kids and everybody meets (in pajama, courtesy of the Club) in the restaurant for a Chinese buffet. You can relax in the large (mixed) relax room for a foot and leg massage, and watch TV on your personal flat screen. Or you go watch the show between 9 and 12 pm (with foot massage if you want). Or rent a room to have a choice of massages. All pretty “clean”. Some Chinese rent a room to play mahjong. The staff, particularly the masseuses are friendly (not yet used to that in Beijing), OK, they don’t speak a word of English and so my Chinese is improving a bit. It’s all is pretty cheap, some clever Chinese just go there for the night instead of a much more expensive hotel room. Yes, breakfast is served too. A unique experience – I see sometimes small tourist groups go there for the experience. Lots of stuff you can do there, too long to list. Real fun.

For the inexperienced in Beijing, those clubs are a rather safe choice – never follow the touts who promise “special massage”. At your own risk. And probably much more expensive.
My daughter had to invent some business plan for a summertime course at Beida (Beijing University) and for some reason she chose outsourcing of massage (I know, weird family). So the whole family did a study on massage in Beijing.
Poor Gilbert, naive laowai from Belgium.
OK, the ads in the newspapers look sometimes a bit “appealing” but I really never guessed.
See here some snippets from Beijing and Shanghai ads in reputable magazines and newspapers:
“Lost Paradise – Blossom Baby – Sweet Dream – Charlies Angels – Ardour Touching – young and excellent masseuses and masseurs – royal oil massage by two ladies – buttocks massage – prostate care (or maintenance) – kidney treatment – in your hotel room or at home – 24hrs – sensuous pleasure massage – minority student (needs translation here… nothing to do with China’s Minorities!).
Wait a moment – prostate maintenance? So, I asked what Traditional Chinese Medicine that was. Oops. Says my wife, “don’t you know? That’s ED treatment”. Look, I show you the websites. OK, from here on censorship has to move in. Kids, time to go to bed!
ED, ED, what is that? Wife: no lift-off. Needs exercise. It’s all in the training, you see. You have to maintain all this in good working order. Well, there is of course also ED with flute music. Wife adds: not real flute, you silly. Just think how one plays the flute! Oops. Hey! What about equal opportunities, no discrimination? Wife: well, there is something like picking the lotus. But I don’t find it right here on my web search.

OK… I really have to stop here.
So it seems those places are all advertised on the web and also contribute to the torrent of sex spam we get every day. Wife: well, if you go there you need to see an ID to get into the nice apartments (pictures available on the web). Matter of being sure who comes there, you see what I mean. Wife: look, handsome boys too. Big muscle. Here he shows auto-ED-treatment.
Oh boy. Beijing 2006. Wife: I think Beijing is getting more “choices” than Bangkok. Anyway, same 5 minutes walk I can have genuine Thai ladies giving oil massage (Bodhi Massage House – very nice place). Bangkok is coming to Beijing.
Well, I’ll keep it simple. I prefer my 5 ladies in the bedroom or the girls of Pacific Ocean torturing my feet while they smile, chat with me and I drink my Yanjing Pijiu (15 non-queer kuai).
Cheers. Welcome to Beijing!

China has a fascination with big companies and famous people. Conferences, articles and surveys love to talk about the Fortune 500 companies and stars like Bill Gates. Even in the foreign chambers of commerce over here I sometimes feel there is a bias in favor of the big MNC (multi national companies). Some chambers such as the European Chamber (EUCCC) are starting to pay more attention to the plight of SME (small and medium enterprises). The Amcham meanwhile considers SME are just interested in visiting panda resorts or something (did not get that one!), never mind the daily problems that affect poor us SME. Except for the Britcham and the UK Embassy, nobody cared about our e-mail problems (see earlier posts).
In the past months – by “coincidence” during the vacation period when many expats are gone – the government came with some troubling new regulations. At least the EUCCC looked into the matter and will organize a seminar about it on 26 September – to discuss about the new regulations for offices in so-called residential buildings and for restrictions on foreigners to buy real estate. Few foreigners realize what is going on and how it could have a dramatic impact on their operations. The main issue is – nobody knows for sure what will happen next year.
So, what is going on?
1. Purchasing apartments
In short: foreigners are no longer allowed to buy apartments or villas, except for their own use and if they have been here for one year. They only can buy one. Questions remain: what happens if they want a larger one, or in another location, what if they leave the city? There are some partial indications but it does not answer all doubts. Before, one would say: if you are so positive about China, why don’t you prove it and buy your own place? Well, we did, we actually bought two. OK, we don’t have enough money to buy one more but…
The reason behind it: the government wants to cool real estate speculation. Actually it will have little or no effect on the market because large foreign companies still have a way to continue investing in the hot real estate market. Who will be left out: the small guys, the SME and individuals who want to fully commit to China. Like the ones who want to buy their place to live and work, investing for the future in their modest SME operations.
Yes, some foreigners (Hong Kong & Macau people and overseas Chinese in particular) are speculating. But their impact is minor according to real estate specialists.
2. Licenses for offices in residential buildings: no more
Now comes the best part. Offices are no longer allowed in “residential buildings”. While that may make sense in a normal country, keeping in mind the high rentals here, many SME opt for SOHO solutions or simply having a small office in a residential compound – cheaper than in an office building. The other advantage for SME: they can work 24/24 and 7/7 what is not possible in most office buildings – no more aircon after office hours and in weekends. SME tend to work hard to survive and many are in consulting or similar services. Their clients ignore weekends. We can for sure acknowledge that…
According to some figures, about 60% of the existing offices in Chaoyang District – the most sought after part of Beijing for offices – are located in such buildings. Oops.
Worse, not to say perplexing: also restaurants are also banned in those “residential buildings”. Now that is going to be a problem. Most restaurants and similar are in the lower floors of residential buildings. A lot of Macdos will have to worry.
Now, the totally vague regulations say – who is already there can stay – but – there might be a “review”. On what grounds the “reviews” will be carried out, nobody has a clue.
As for now, new registrations are refused. But what will happen next? Anyway, the rules again penalize the SME – here both Chinese and foreign. They will have to spend exorbitant rental rates – they cannot spend USD 2,000 per month for a small office of medium standard. To give an indication: office rentals are something like 20 USD/month per GROSS square meter for a reasonable location and quality.
China loves the Microsoft and alike. SME: think again before setting up operation in China.
For more details, courtesy of the law firm ADAMAS, see the (edited) brief.

Scams and tourist traps multiply in Beijing. Black taxis at the airport, so-called sexy bars where Sanlitun touts dry to drag you to and the infamous tea house rip-offs.
The tea house scams are well known in Beijing, the Chinese and local English press has reported them several times. The trick is simple: “friendly” Chinese boys and/or girls target tourists, mostly in the Tiananmen area, start a conversation and suggest to chat more in a traditional tea house, like in Dazhalan Street south of Qianmen. Sounds oh so cool for those innocent tourists. The victims then get a spicy bill for some cups of tea, like RMB 2,600 (260 euro). Failure to pay results in physical threats and abuse, lock-up in the tea house or worse. Of course, no receipt is given. The tea houses are well known and come up with fake reasons like, “expensive tea”, “shows” and alike.
The latest victim was the son of my friend Serge Janssens de Varebeke, no less than the President of the European Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC). Poor Serge called several police departments who all had one reply in common: “not our concern”. They just came with the lamest of excuses while the whole Chinese press is aware of the crooks. One may wonder – the police is useless, or is too close to the scam operators, or simply don’t care about tourists and the image of Beijing. Or all of them. What a nice publicity for Beijing! The Chinese are sooooooo friendly, right? Welcome to Beijing 2008! And the mayor asks all Pekinese to smile? Better clean up the streets of touts, pick-pockets, crooks, drug dealers and alike. But as we all know, Tiananmen security services are toooooo busy looking for those dangerous religious extremists. Now, that’s a priority. Who cares about criminals?
As Serge said, those things do not happen at the same rate in Shanghai. There the authorities seem to care a bit more about their image.
Serge is not giving up, once he is back from his trip to Europe he intends to call all possible foreign journalists and invite them to have a look at the tea house in Dazhalan. I will be happy to join.
No wonder the same authorities are clamping down more and more on the press who could expose the scams. It might have adverse economic consequences for all those friendly Chinese youngsters wandering around on Tiananmen. Who would want that? They would not be able to afford their Chivas with green tea in Babyface or alike, or their private karaoke room. We westerners are so selfish. Shame on us.
Well, I am ashamed for Beijing. People come to me “as advisor for the Olympic Economy” with the Beijing Government. What can I tell them?
Well, at least there has been a crackdown on the drugs. All club and disco owners have been warned not to allow any drug users on their premises – fines are serious, the venues can even be closed.
But more has to be done.

Being a consultant, especially in China, is not always easy. On this Saturday, I’ve got to get it off my chest.
Many companies think we should be happy to dump all our expertise on them free of charge and still say thanks for their patience to listen to us.
I have seen many of those passing by to bug me on the Olympics, on doing business in China, requesting contact details of Chinese companies or entities.
A couple of days ago one more of those “well-known companies” tried to bug me. They wanted a list of key people they could invite for an event to promote their products for the Olympics. I explained it required several steps to achieve a real result:
– we need to understand which products exactly they want to promote and to what type of end-users;
– we verify that the people they themselves propose actually have input in the decision-making process;
– we suggest other people that they missed out and have an impact in the process;
– we call each person to explain the background for the event and try to convince them to attend;
– we make sure the interested parties get the invitation and double-check again they will really attend.
Organizing dinners, seminars or any event without the right preparation often results in no-shows, half empty tables and guests who actually have no real connection with the whole story. I have been to many seminars where the foreign company was mostly making presentations to their own staff with very few of the actual customers being present (an listening).
Many foreign companies target the wrong people to attend as they don’t understand the decision-making process in the Chinese bureaucracy. For the Olympics, most foreigners insist to invite BOCOG delegates. As a matter of fact, BOCOG has little to do with the overall infrastructure projects and the sports venues – except when it has a relation with the Games. Many companies fail to identify the real end-users and decision-makers.
Especially for Olympic-related projects the Chinese side receives many invitations. Reaching out to key people requires a personal good contact so they can be convinced to attend. If you just send an invitation through the mail or even the driver it risks to be used for recycling only (Green Olympics, remember?)
As consultants we invest an awful amount of time trying to understand the complexity of the Chinese bureaucracy, to monitor the press, to attend seminars, to spend time with our contacts, to help them out when they need assistance. In my case it also involves helping the Chinese government as an advisor – free of charge. It all creates the goodwill, trust and “guanxi”. So, when we ask them something they will at least check it out seriously.
We receive numerous requests from companies to “understand” what opportunities exist in this market, how to proceed, to whom to talk to, and so on. They expect us to give seminars and spend hours with their delegates. We are then supposed to give away our expertise gained during years of hard work. We are expected to be happy that their great leaders want to meet with us and we should be honored to be taken out for a lunch or to receive one of their crappy company gifts. Thank you, I have enough pens and I don’t like to spend a lunch talking and trying to eat at the same time. I prefer to stay home and have a nice sandwich, surely better for my digestion.
Companies are offended when we ask a fee for the meetings, seminars or helping them to sort out the right attendants to their party. How dare we! How outrageously expensive we are! Well, if they think it is all so easy – “My goodness! You just need to make some phone calls!”, go ahead, read China Daily and call yourself.
Well, I tell them: if you consult your lawyer, your doctor: you don’t pay either?
So, the well-known company of course was not willing to pay the fee. Bye bye and good riddance (I already knew they were a real cheapskate type of company).
Worse in a sense but rather typical: it was (again) a Belgian company. For sure explains why I am mostly reluctant to even lose 15 minutes of my time with them. They are all so friendly till you talk euro language.
Same for visiting trade delegations or EMBA groups. Many of those trips are organized by overseas consultants who ask pretty nice fees to show China. “Discover China through our fact-finding tour, listen to local specialists”. Yep, there we come. Those consultants want us to give a seminar for the delegation, get from us all the insights, put it in their book on China and give seminars about it when back home. Of course they pocket the money all along the way. We here in China, paying thousands of euro of rent per month and all the rest, well, we should be honored to be a speaker. Nice try folks. No fee, no seminar. Anyway, I have to go to the gym to train for my next marathon. (Damn! Who is going to pay the membership fee?)
Of course we do make exceptions. We do actually meet some nice people here.